


picture me in the trees

by complicationstoo



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Childhood Friends to Lovers, Getting Back Together, M/M, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:33:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26201956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/complicationstoo/pseuds/complicationstoo
Summary: Tony and Steve were childhood friends that almost became more, but Tony moved and they lost their chance. Thirteen years later, a chance meeting brings Tony back into Steve's life.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 19
Kudos: 272





	picture me in the trees

**Author's Note:**

> This work is inspired by the Taylor Swift song Seven :)

Steve thinks he’ll always remember that first moment he saw Tony. It was long before he ever knew his name, even longer before they would become friends. He remembers a boy in a tire swing, no older than five years old to his seven, and dark hair billowing with the breeze. The boy held the rope so tightly in his hands that his skin turned red while his knuckles went white, and his toes gripped the rubber of the tire as he seemingly worked up the nerve to jump off and fall into the creek below. The swing continued to sway him through the trees, back and forth until it slowed to a stop again above solid land, and the boy pushed one foot against the dirt to start the motion back up again. That time the boy laughed as the leaves brushed his skin and the wind tangled his unruly hair into more knots. 

He’s sure something must have come after that. They never spoke, that much he knows for sure. Steve followed the swing’s path with his eyes from his place at the edge of the creek bed, wanting to say something, but not knowing what. But someone must have been the first to leave. Steve’s mom must have called him to come back, shouting his name through the short distance of dense trees between his home and the creek. Or maybe the boy left first, without ever gathering the courage to jump in at all. His memory never quite makes it that far, too hung up on that first image, like flashbacks in a film reel. Too hung up on that laugh, and the way it echoed through the quiet afternoon. 

It echoed again much later, after weeks of Steve showing up at the creek and hoping the boy would be there, too. He had hoped the first time wouldn’t be the last, but after every passing week, as July faded into August, and August slipped into September, it seemed more and more likely that the boy would become nothing more than a memory. 

But there it was again, a laugh bouncing through the hallways of the elementary school, just like he remembered it. The boy was standing next to a girl whose name Steve can’t remember anymore, laughing at something she must have said. 

Steve was organizing his pencils into a neat row on his desk, each one meticulously sharpened to a perfect point, when he finally got a name. 

“Hi,” a quiet voice said, making Steve jump at the sudden noise. “I’m Tony.”

Steve looked up and found the boy from the creek sitting in the desk next to him. Steve’s first thought was that he looked smaller somehow, curled in on himself. He looked nervous, like he was afraid Steve would say something mean to him. 

“I’m Steve. It’s nice to meet you.”

He can’t remember what they talked about that first day, but it didn’t take long at all for them to become friends. Tony was younger than him by two years, but so much smarter. He always spoke in big words and didn’t mind that Steve sometimes had to ask him to explain them. 

They passed notes a lot, whenever the teacher wasn’t looking. Sometimes Tony would make jokes or ask Steve if he could come over after school. Sometimes Tony would write just one word, and Steve would doodle whatever it was and send it back. 

It went on like that for years. They always ended up with the same teacher somehow, and Steve suspects now that it had something to do with Tony’s mother. Summers were spent at the creek or Steve’s house. They went to Tony’s house only once and never went back again. 

They added other friends to their twosome. Bucky came along in the fourth grade. James, or as Tony called him, Rhodey, joined in the fifth. Bruce and Tony became friends during science club, and he slowly infiltrated the group during middle school. Sam was the last to join, coming along in the ninth grade when Steve joined the football team. But no matter who else was there, Steve and Tony were always the closest. 

They liked to make plans for a future that they knew would never happen. Tony talked about running away, leaving behind the father that didn’t care for him and never coming back. The location changed every time. Australia, Mexico, Spain, India. The only thing that stayed the same was that Steve would be there, painting water lilies like Monet in the north of France or sketching the London skyline in charcoal. 

Steve kissed him for the first time on Tony’s fourteenth birthday. It was the end of May, two weeks before their last day of sophomore year. They had the small party at Steve’s house, just their friends, a stack of pizzas, and a birthday cake Steve sequestered Rhodey's help to make. Everyone else had already gone home when Steve and Tony went outside to look at the stars. 

They were lying in the grass a few feet from the creek, shoulders pressed together. 

“What did you wish for?” Steve asked. He turned his head to look at Tony and saw the stars reflected in his eyes. It was hardly the first time Steve noticed how beautiful Tony was, but it made his breath catch in his throat nonetheless. 

He never expected the answer he received. 

“You.”

A month later they were sitting in almost the same spot, hands intertwined and their feet in the shallow water, when Tony told him he was moving and Steve kissed him for the last time as a goodbye. Tony’s lips tasted of salt mixed with the sweet tea Steve’s mom used to make in the summer. He never got the chance to say the three words that had been burning on the tip of his tongue for years. They didn’t get nearly enough time for that. 

He’s twenty eight and deciding between mint chocolate chip and vanilla bean ice cream when he hears a voice say, “Get the vanilla. You like it better.”

The basket almost falls from his hand, and he turns around so quickly that he almost gives himself whiplash. 

Tony looks just as gorgeous as ever. His hair is a touch on the long side, brushing against the tips of his ears and curling at the nape of his neck, and he’s finally managed to grow the facial hair he was so desperate for as a teenager. His red dress shirt and dark jeans show exactly how in shape he is. 

Steve realizes that he’s staring and should probably say something. 

“Hey, Tony.”

“Hi, Steve,” Tony smiles. “It’s been a really long time.”

Steve nods, “Yeah, you, uh, you look good.”

His smile widens, and Steve can see that he’s had braces at some point in the last thirteen years. 

“You do, too. But then again, you always looked good.”

“So did you,” Steve says. 

There’s an awkward pause where neither of them seems to know where to go from there. All Steve knows is that he doesn’t want it to end in the frozen aisle of a grocery store. 

Steve starts to speak at the same time as Tony, and both stop again. 

“Sorry,” Steve says, face heating up. “Go ahead.”

“I was just going to ask if you wanted to catch up,” Tony says. “If you’re not busy later tonight, we could get a drink or something.”

“I’m not busy,” Steve says too quickly. 

“Good. That’s - that’s good. Um, we could exchange numbers?” 

“Yeah, or maybe if you’re free right now, I live about a block from here.”

Steve feels better about how quickly he answered when Tony does the same. “I’d like that.”

He belatedly remembers the basket in his hands and looks down at it. He can’t just leave it - he’d feel guilty about making some underpaid employee put his things away. Tony seems to be reading his mind, however, and lifts his own basket. 

“I’m actually done here if you are.”

He isn’t, but he nods anyway. They make their way over to the self checkout together, and Steve asks, “So since when do you live in Brooklyn?”

“I don’t,” Tony says. “I’m in Manhattan, but I was on a date over here that didn’t go so well, so here I am.”

Steve sneaks a glance at his basket, knowing exactly what he’ll find in it. “Getting pudding cups to drown your sorrows in?”

Tony grins, “Of course.”

“It’s nice to know some things never change.”

“Not the important things,” Tony says, his look somewhat pointed, though Steve might be imagining that. 

They checkout separately and walk out together, bags in hand. It’s a quick walk, and Tony fills the time by telling him about his bad date. 

“It’s at least my fifth bad date in a row,” he says when he finishes the story and they’re climbing up the stairs to the third floor of Steve’s building. “Probably more than that, but I’m losing track now.”

“Maybe you should take a break for a while,” Steve suggests. 

“I’d love to, but every time Pepper swears she’s found the perfect guy and she looks at me with these big, sad eyes until I cave and say yes.”

Steve puts his key in the door and turns the lock. “Who’s Pepper?”

“My assistant and the only person keeping my life together most days. She thinks that I need someone else to bother with all my personal problems.”

Steve laughs as he sets his bags down on the counter, “Well, hey, it’s a good thing you bumped into me, then. I used to be fluent in Tony Stark’s personal problems.”

Tony’s smile is a little sad. “Yeah, you were, weren’t you? I miss that.”

“Me too,” Steve says, and just like that the mood has shifted into something melancholy. “Can we - should we talk about what happened?”

“Is there even anything to talk about?” Tony asks. He leans back on his hands against the kitchen counter, plastic grocery bag dangling from his wrist. 

Steve shrugs, “We said we’d keep in touch, and for a while we did until we just - didn’t anymore. And honestly? I have no idea why we stopped. Do you?”

“You stopped calling,” Tony says, though it’s not accusatory. 

“You stopped answering.”

Tony looks down at the floor, and Steve follows his gaze to expensive looking shoes. When they were kids, it was easy to forget the kind of money Tony came from. When it was just the two of them eating peanut butter sandwiches that Steve’s mom made, slowly swinging together above the creek. He never seemed like the sole heir to a billion dollar company back then. He was just Tony, with his sunburnt shoulders and bare feet. 

It’s a lot harder to forget now as they stand in the tight space of Steve’s kitchen. His apartment is barely big enough to fit him all by himself and it’s still almost more than he can afford sometimes. He’s surprised by how little it actually bothers him. 

“That’s true,” Tony says. “I didn’t really mean to, but I suppose that doesn’t make it better, does it?”

Steve nods slowly. He remembers the hurt of every unanswered call, and for a second he’s sixteen and losing his best friend and almost boyfriend all over again. But then he remembers ignoring the returning call on purpose, letting the phone ring over and over in some sort of juvenile attempt at proving to Tony that he had a life, too, until weeks had passed without the sound of Tony’s voice in his ear. 

“Maybe we should just chalk it up to bad timing and leave it be.”

“Bad timing, huh?” Tony says, a small smile forming. “That implies that there’s a better time for us. A time where things would have ended differently.”

“You don’t think so?” 

Tony pauses, contemplating, forming his words. “Sometimes I think that if I hadn’t moved away, if I had stayed and you and I had gotten to really be you and I, we could have been something really great. One of those stories that sounds too good to be true, but you and I would have known better because we lived it. 

“But then most of the time I tell myself that it’s for the best. Because you got to be Steve outside of Tony-and-Steve, and I got to do the same. We had the chance to experience something outside of just the two of us, become our own individual people. The fairytale sounds nice, but it never would have worked.”

Steve smiles, shaking his head fondly, “What a classic Tony Stark non-answer.”

Tony laughs, “But am I wrong?”

“No,” Steve says. “Of course you’re not.”

“Wow, you’ve finally admitted that I’m always right,” Tony grins. “And it only took twenty years.”

“Hey, I didn’t say always. You just happen to be right this one time.”

Tony hums, a familiar amused glint in his honey-colored eyes. Suddenly he claps his hands together and straightens up. “Well, now that that’s all out of the way, how about you point me to which of these drawers has spoons and we crack open these pudding cups while you tell me about all the crazy shit I’ve missed.”

Steve opens the drawer to Tony’s left and says, “Spoons and pudding I can do, but unfortunately, there’s not much crazy shit to tell.”

Tony takes the spoons and heads into the miniscule living room, throwing himself down on Steve’s old couch. He looks out of place and completely at home at the exact same time. Peeling back the lid to a pudding cup, he thoroughly licks it clean. Now Steve’s fifteen again, and Tony’s wandering hands are getting just a touch too low. He has to look away before the memory can fully resurface. 

“I find that hard to believe,” Tony says. Steve sits next to him, about a foot of space between them, and Tony hands him a pudding cup and a spoon. “Are you really telling me that in thirteen years, you haven’t done one crazy thing?”

“You were the crazy one between the two of us,” Steve replies. “Or did you forget all the shit you dragged me into?”

“Oh, please, you were an active and willing participant and you know it.”

He was, technically, but only because he would have done anything Tony wanted with just one word. 

Tony reaches out and puts his hand on Steve’s arm, right above his elbow. “Really, though. What’s your life been like? I want to know everything.”

“Well,” Steve sighs, “I joined the army right out of high school.”

“What?” Tony looks surprised and maybe a bit concerned. 

“Had to pay for college somehow, right?” Steve says wryly. “Not all of us could be MIT’s golden child.”

Tony bites his lip. “You heard about that, huh?”

“You’re kind of a public figure, Tony. It’s hard not to hear about you.”

There’s a brief flash of disappointment on his face, and Steve quickly amends, “But I’ll admit that I was keeping an eye out for news about you. I liked knowing that you were doing okay. I know this wasn’t exactly the life you had planned.” 

Tony smiles, a small, fragile thing. “No, it wasn’t. But life happened and, well, someone had to step up.”

“I was sorry to hear about your parents,” Steve says softly. “I thought about calling, but I wasn’t sure how welcome it would be.”

“Probably not very,” Tony admits. “I wasn’t in the best place back then.” 

Tony continues after a brief pause, “Kind of went off the rails for a while there. A lot of drinking and too many drugs. After a couple of months, Rhodey literally picked me up off the floor and told me it was time to get my shit together. I’m glad he did, because I’m not sure I would have ever gotten there on my own.”

“I’m still sorry I couldn’t have been there for you.”

“Don’t be,” Tony says. “Everything turned out okay in the end.”

Steve nods, absentmindedly scraping his spoon around the empty pudding cup. Tony pulls his attention back when he says, “Don’t think I didn’t notice how you managed to completely avoid telling me about your life just now, by the way.”

Steve laughs, and Tony prods, “Come on, what happened after the army?”

“Moved to Brooklyn, started art school, became a graphic designer.”

“Graphic design, huh?” Tony says, voice thoughtful. “I always pictured you as a painter in my head. You know, one of those guys that does the abstract stuff that no one really understands but everyone thinks is great.”

Steve smiles, “You’ve got a picture of me in your head?”

“You don’t have a single social media page, so I had no choice but to make up my own version,” Tony says, smiling back. “Hope you don’t mind that I made you permanently single because you were so hung up on me that you couldn’t possibly be with someone else.”

“So the Steve in your head is a sad, lonely painter?”

“Tormented by losing the love of his life, yes.”

“Poor guy,” Steve laughs. He puts his spoon and empty cup on the coffee table, and when he leans back, he’s closer to Tony than he was before. There’s a small smear of chocolate in the corner of his mouth, and Steve reaches out to wipe it away without thinking. 

Tony catches his wrist before he can put his hand back down. His thumb slides along the tendon, then up to his palm, eyes tracking the movement the whole time. Steve closes his fingers around Tony’s thumb, and Tony’s calloused fingers wrap around the back of his hand.

“Have there been other people?” Tony asks quietly. “I mean, I’m sure there have been, but anyone important? Anyone right now?”

Steve shakes his head, “A few people here and there. Maybe one or two that could have been important, but no one right now. Not for a while, actually.”

Tony leans in a little closer, and his free hand finds Steve’s shoulder, right at the base of his neck. Steve feels himself naturally reciprocating, and the space between them diminishes. 

“Stop me if I’m reading this all wrong, okay?” Tony whispers. “I know it’s been a long time, and you might not feel the same way about me anymore, but -”

Steve cuts him off with the press of his mouth on Tony’s. It’s nothing like their first kiss, which was hesitant and inexperienced, but it makes him feel the exact same way. Like he’s coming home after being away for so long, back to the safest place he’s ever known. 

He doesn’t know which one of them moves first, whether it’s Tony that climbs into his lap or if Steve’s the one that pulls him there by the hand on his hip, but either way Tony’s knees are bracketing his thighs and his hands are in Steve’s hair. 

The thought invades his mind that they should stop before it can go too far, but then he remembers that they aren’t teenagers anymore. There’s no such thing as too far for them now. 

His hands go everywhere he never dared let them wander before. Down the ridges of Tony’s spine, below the line of his belt to firm, round muscles. Tony groans into their kiss, and Steve takes it as a sign to continue his careful exploration. 

His hands move to the front, pulling Tony’s shirt out of where it’s tucked into his pants. One hand slips under the fabric, skating along the planes of Tony’s abs, but he quickly finds that this isn’t enough. He needs more. 

He unbuttons Tony’s shirt while Tony moves down to kiss his jaw. The feeling of Tony’s mouth is nothing new, but the scrape of his facial hair definitely is. It’s electrifying a way Steve wouldn’t have expected. 

Pushing the shirt off Tony’s shoulders and onto the floor, Steve runs his hands down Tony’s bare chest. His fingers automatically find the small scar on his ribs, a remnant of a fall from a tree when he was seven. Steve remembers holding him while he cried and taking him back to his house. He remembers Tony on the edge of the bathtub while Steve’s mom bandaged it for him, and Tony’s bewildered expression like no one had ever taken care of him before. 

Lower still, he finds another scar, but Steve has no memory of how it got there. 

“Workshop accident,” Tony’s labored voice says in his ear. “Screwdriver slipped.”

“You stabbed yourself in the stomach with a screwdriver?”

Tony laughs, “There’s a reason I’m no longer allowed in the lab for forty eight hours straight.”

Steve follows the line of the scar with his fingertip. 

“We don’t really know each other anymore, do we?”

Tony sighs, leaning back to rest on Steve’s thighs. His hands are on Steve’s shoulders, thumbs rubbing small circles into his skin through his t-shirt. 

“And here I thought we’d get to skip this part,” Tony says, a self-deprecating tone to it. 

“Sorry,” Steve smiles sadly, “didn’t mean to ruin the moment.”

Tony runs his hand through Steve’s hair, and Steve leans into the touch. He cups his cheek, then slowly moves in to kiss him again. It’s soft and brief, the complete obvious of the previous kiss. 

“I know that you’re one of the bravest, kindest people I’ve ever met in my life and that no one has ever managed to make me laugh as much you used to. I know that you’re smarter than you give yourself credit for and you’re always looking out for your friends,” Tony says. “I might not know all the little details anymore, but you’re still the boy who held my hand on the first day of third grade and punched Brock Rumlow in the face when he made fun of us.”

“He had it coming.”

“He really did,” Tony smiles. He turns solemn again, looking down at the design on Steve’s t-shirt instead of meeting his eyes. He’s apprehensive as he asks, “And you know me, right? I haven’t changed that much?” 

“No, not that much,” Steve reassures. “You’re still the first boy I ever loved.”

Tony freezes, “You loved me? You never said.”

“It’s not really something you say over the phone, is it?”

“I wish you had,” Tony says. “I would’ve said it back.” 

“Would it have changed anything?”

Tony traces his collarbone. “Probably not. But I would’ve liked to hear it anyway.”

“Next time I won’t wait.”

Hope makes Tony’s eyes shine brighter than before. “Next time?”

“When I fall in love with you again.”

Tony smiles so wide that it must hurt. His mouth finds Steve’s again, and it doesn’t matter anymore that so much has changed. Tony’s still the boy from so many summers ago, swinging through the trees above the creek, and Steve’s forever enraptured by him. 

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr [@ifmywishescametrue](https://ifmywishescametrue.tumblr.com) :)


End file.
